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NEW WORK BY ARTIST ADAM PENDLETON BRINGS AN ART OF PROTEST
INTO THE MUSEUM
Artist in conversation with activist DeRay Mckesson on Saturday, March 25
BALTIMORE, MD (UPDATED March 28, 2017)— The Baltimore Museum
of Art (BMA) presents Front Room: Adam Pendleton, a dramatic
installation of new and recent work by the New-York based artist that
examines the relationship between abstraction and representation
through layered and fragmented texts and images sourced from the
artist’s personal library. On view March 26–October 1, 2017, the
exhibition transforms the wall adjacent to the East Lobby staircase with
a monumental Wall Work by Pendleton. The Contemporary Wing’s Front Room Gallery will feature three immersive
floor-to-ceiling Wall Works overlaid with paintings, collages, and silkscreens on Mylar by the artist.
“Adam Pendleton has created a compelling body of work that deeply connects our country’s past and present issues
with race,” said BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director Christopher Bedford. “We are extremely proud to present his
new work in a way that will make an impression on everyone who encounters it.”
Pendleton (American, b. 1984) is a voracious reader who uses his personal library of words and images to disrupt and
reconsider preconceived notions of history and culture as they relate to the avant-garde and current and past sociopolitical movements. The animating force of his work is found in Black Dada—the artist's term for a broad
conceptualization of blackness. Black Dada combines “Black,” which Pendleton describes as “an open-ended signifier”
and “Dada,” a nonsense word which recalls the name of the radical artistic movement that developed in response to
the horrors of World War I by producing absurdist artwork that challenged the social order. A core question the artist
addresses is: What does Black Dada look like? By fragmenting, layering, and collaging materials he reveals new and
unexpected relationships between the past and present, language and image, and abstraction and representation.
Pendleton’s recent work includes language drawn directly from fraught periods in America’s racial and cultural history,
including the Black Lives Matter movement. “The political dynamic isn’t new,” said Pendleton of Black Lives Matter.
“What’s new is the language that is at once a public mourning, a rallying cry, and a poetic plea.” In the East Lobby and
the Front Room Gallery, Pendleton provides historical context by evoking the American Civil Rights Movement of the
1960s. Several works pull apart the phrase “a victim of American democracy,” derived from a 1964 speech by
Malcolm X titled “The Ballot or the Bullet,” including the four large paintings that occupy the main wall of the Front
Room Gallery. Although not an exact quotation, the words capture Malcolm X’s conviction that democracy had failed
African Americans. The paintings, featuring long linear strokes of black spray-paint, move beyond the significance of the
language though and investigate the limits of abstraction and the perceptual potential of figure and ground dynamics.
In Pendleton’s choreographed installation the viewer is empowered to decipher personal meaning as they navigate the
space of the gallery.
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Front Room: Adam Pendleton/news release
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Pendleton’s work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe. His work is also in
the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Tate, London.
The BMA will host a public program featuring a conversation between Adam Pendleton and activist DeRay Mckesson on
Saturday, March 25, 2 p.m. This talk is sponsored by the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art.
This exhibition is curated by Helene Grabow, Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art. The exhibition is generously
sponsored by Eddie C. & C. Sylvia Brown.
THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART
The Baltimore Museum of Art is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and
contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 95,000 objects—including the largest
public holding of works by Henri Matisse. Throughout the museum, visitors will find an outstanding selection of
American and European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; works by established and emerging contemporary
artists; significant artworks from China; stunning Antioch mosaics; and an exceptional collection of art from Africa. The
BMA’s galleries also showcase examples from one of the nation’s finest collections of prints, drawings, and
photographs and exquisite textiles from around the world. The 210,000-square-foot museum is distinguished by a
grand historic building designed in the 1920s by renowned American architect John Russell Pope and two beautifully
landscaped sculpture gardens. As a major cultural destination for the region, the BMA hosts a dynamic program of
exhibitions, events, and educational programs throughout the year. General admission to the BMA is free so that
everyone can enjoy the power of art.
VISITOR INFORMATION
General admission to the BMA is free. Special exhibitions may be ticketed. The BMA is open Wednesday through
Sunday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. The museum is closed Monday, Tuesday, New Year’s Day, July 4, Thanksgiving, and
Christmas. The BMA is located at 10 Art Museum Drive, three miles north of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. For general
museum information, call 443-573-1700 or visit artbma.org.
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Image: Adam Pendleton. A Victim of American Democracy II (wall work), 2015. © Adam Pendleton, courtesy Pace Gallery